Читать книгу 1997 Special Investigation in Connection with 1996 Federal Election Campaigns - United States Senate Committee - Страница 6

Table of Contents

With the approval of $4.35 million in funding for the special investigation, the Committee was finally able to hire staff to conduct the investigation. Only nine and a half months remained for the Committee’s investigation, which would now cover a broad scope. Two months into the Congress, the real work of the Committee could finally commence.

Scores of allegations of wrongdoing, either illegal or improper activities, had been brought to the Committee’s attention, primarily through the news media. The Committee staff had to analyze each of these allegations, prioritize them for the investigation, investigate them, prepare for hearings, and hold hearings all in the space of nine months.

The first task was to complete the hiring of necessary staff. The majority staff eventually grew to include 23 lawyers (including the chief counsel, deputy chief counsel, and three senior counsel), two investigators, and necessary support staff. In addition, the majority staff included an investigator detailed from the General Accounting Office. The minority staff included 14 lawyers (including the chief counsel and deputy chief counsels), and necessary support staff. Both the majority and minority were able to use jointly the resources of nine special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who were detailed to the Committee. The work of these agents proved of invaluable assistance to the Committee, which could not have undertaken the extensive investigation it was able to conduct without these professional investigators, many of whom spoke relevant foreign languages, notably Chinese.

Between March and the end of the year, a period of only nine and a half months, after hiring staff, the Committee conducted as thorough and complete an investigation as time permitted. During that span, the Committee issued 427 subpoenas requested by both the majority and minority either for documents or for testimony. The Committee received in response to its subpoenas over 1,500,000 pages of documents, all of which had to be reviewed and the relevance of each assessed. Committee staff took 200 depositions and conducted over 200 witness interviews. The Committee held 32 days of hearings, taking testimony from 72 witnesses. Finally, the Committee undertook to prepare this report as directed by the Senate.